First and foremost. Tom Stevens, having resigned his membership, is no longer a member of the LPPA and should no longer be allowed the privilege to post on any LPPA e-mail list.

Second. Tom Stevens stated that he “appointed” the new chairman, Aaron Rosengarten. There were no elections, there was a statement that Aaron was appointed Chair of Northampton County Libertarian Committee, and Tom Stevens appointed himself Executive Director of an affiliate of the LPPA while no longer being a member of the LPPA. According to the LPPA, an Executive Director must meet the same qualifications as a board member. Tom Stevens does not.

Tom Stevens has violated our bylaws, and under Article 2 Section 3, the board was going to vote on the following issues at the August 17 Board Meeting.

1. Tom Stevens, having learned that he was going to lose his membership resigns.
2. Tom Stevens having resigned, appoints his successor while naming himself executive director
3. He attempts to damage the credibility of those in his own county committee who have questioned what has been happening.
4. Paul Rizzo, whose home was to be the venue for the Northampton Libertarian Committee plans on moving forward with the meeting in an effort to sort out what has happened these past few days.
5. Given that Tom Stevens was appointing people while resigning, I want to thank Paul Rizzo for standing up, creating an agenda for the meeting.

I will not meddle in the affairs of the Northampton County affiliate, but I will encourage an open and honest debate, and would appreciate updates from all involved about what is happening.

Anyone interested in attending this meeting, please contact Paul Rizzo paulprizzo@yahoo.com who will be copied on this e-mail. In addition, Tom Stevens has a long history of damaging organizations in which he manages to gain membership. I believe the members of the LPPA have a duty to warn all other organizations Tom would seek to destroy. The membership can do what it wants, but I would suggest a resolution condemning his actions while making another resolution stating that we, as an organization, will not do business with any entity Tom Stevens is affiliated with. As chairman, I am not able to make motions, but I am hoping that someone within our membership will draft such a resolution, and help the LPPA heal while warning other organizations about what will be coming their way should they invite Tom Stevens to join.

Sincerely,

Steve Scheetz

P.S. as with all of my posts here: If anyone wishes to put this on any other FB page, or publish it anywhere else, you do not need my permission. I only ask that if anyone posts this, please post it in its entirety.

With no disrespect to the state chair intended, I would keep Tom Stevens on our email lists. His material is HILARIOUS! He resigned his LPPA membership before it could be revoked. He’s now calling himself the “executive director” of a county committee he cobbled together before the LPPA threw him out of office, while the Libertarians of that county ignore him and his teenage county chair. I especially enjoy laughing at his self-promotional personal blog entries pretending to be news stories including quotations allegedly from other people that are obviously written by Tom himself. The lolz keep on coming.

Northampton County Libertarian Party Becomes First County Organization In Pennsylvania To Hire An Executive Director

On July 18, 2013, the Libertarian Party of Northampton County (LPNC) became the first County Organization in Pennsylvania to hire an Executive Director. By vote of the Executive Committee, a contract was approved to engage the services of Dr. Tom Stevens, former LPPA State Chair and former Northampton LP County Chair, as Executive Director of the Libertarian Party of Northampton County effective August 1, 2013.

The three (3) year contract will be a salaried position and will involve the following duties and responsibilities as set forth in the contract:

…to recruit candidates to run for local office, to coordinate membership recruitment drives, to schedule and co-sponsor local events and meetings, to represent and speak on behalf of the Libertarian Party of Northampton County when dealing with outside organizations and the press, to propose motions to the Executive Committee, to run its Yahoo Groups, Meetup Groups, Facebook Groups and other social media outlets, to propose meeting times and locations to the County Chair, and to handle such additional responsibilities as he may deem appropriate or that are assigned to him by the County Chair and/or the Executive Committee.

Aaron Rosengarten, County Chair of the Libertarian Party of Northampton County, said:

We are extremely pleased that Dr. Tom Stevens, a former LPPA State Chair and a Founding Member of the Northampton County LP, has agreed to help our local chapter by serving as its Executive Director. To my knowledge, this is the first time any local County Organization chartered by the Libertarian Party of Pennsylvania has hired an Executive Director. The Northampton County LP is proud to be making history in this regard. Our chapter has seen extraordinary membership growth and has been an extremely active pro-liberty organization during the time Dr. Stevens served as its County Chair. I am extremely optimistic regarding what we can achieve with him serving as our Executive Director. His political experience will be invaluable to me and to the chapter.

Thomas Robert Stevens served as State Chair of the Libertarian Party of Pennsylvania from April 22, 2012 to April 5, 2013. He served as County Chair of the Libertarian Party of Northampton County from September 21, 2011 until July 18, 2013.

There has always been a policy that the E-mail lists were for members the of the LPPA.

Stating that Tom is no longer a member and should not be posting is not me banning him, it is him leaving the LPPA and all of the privileges that come with membership.

Erik, no disrespect taken, and I know that his antics are amusing to a large degree… I apologize for taking that away from you, (I guess from all of us really) by enforcing the policy, but we all must make certain sacrifices!

Anyway, at some point, we all have to close the door on this sad chapter in LPPA history and move forward.

I must make a retraction in part of my letter to the membership. I was Using Tom Stevens’s Blog as my source, hence the error in facts.

Cited from Gary Donoyan:

” Corrections to Steve Scheetz’s post: Tom Stevens’ effort to resign from the LPNY was not accepted, and was thus not effective. RRO 63. Stevens’ expulsion from the LPNY was accomplished on 21 July 2010, by operation of the LPNY Bylaws (Art.VII(B)(1)), when he failed to appeal from the decision of the State Committee extending his suspension after a hearing. Opinion and notice document at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Nassau_LP/files/ ”

Steve @8, it’ll be difficult to lose such a ready source of entertainment. Maybe as James Babb had suggested, we should institute Dramatic Readings of Tom Stevens’ Greatest Hits at our annual state conventions. There could even be prizes.

@13 You do not need to be able to afford something to sign a contract, as many Americans with home mortgages have discovered.

Riddle: Are the debts of PA County Organizations legally the debts of he State Party, or could you convince a judge that this is true?

While several state parties have for some time had paid employees without going broke, and at least one state party (NC) has found the secret to a safe contract, several other state parties have ended up via the paid staff route in very difficult financial straits.

Jill, as near as I can tell, Tom Stevens never stopped being a Republican, even when he initiated fraud in using an LPPA member’s address in order to obtain a Libertarian Voter Registration Card for Pennsylvania, he was still listed as an active Republican in Queens County NY.